


steh auf

by fivour



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Drug Use, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Heavy Angst, Suicide, Underage Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-10-26 04:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fivour/pseuds/fivour
Summary: If only Ranmaru known a month ago how much that old guy cared about him.





	1. i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy spooky month. hope you're ready to be sad. this story does have triggering content later on, so tread carefully.

Ranmaru hasn't spoken since his father's funeral. Giulietta and Juri have tried to make him talk, to make him do anything other than shut himself away in his room, only leaving at night to steal Giulietta's cigarettes and have a smoke.

_They only know what they see_, Ranmaru thinks. He doesn't shut himself in — the fact he'll have to face his father's absence does. The bass his father gave him, that rests in its homemade stand by his door, shuts him in. Giulietta's condescending excuse for comfort shuts him in, Juri's questions shut him in. As far as Ranmaru is concerned, he's not shutting himself in. He's trapped.

But maybe, most of all, the thing that keeps him inside his room, the room that stinks of stolen cigarettes and self pity, the room he's had for sixteen years; is his father. As Ranmaru sits here alone, many things may go through his mind, but one is always there.

The night he found him.

The thud had woken him up. Ranmaru never got up when he heard something. It didn't matter if anything fell over, because they could replace it. Even if it were something serious, Ranmaru hated his family so much he hoped they got robbed. But this noise wasn't the sound of a vase breaking, nor of one of the cooks dropping something in the kitchen. It filled him with dread, because it was the distinct sound of a body hitting hardwood.

At first he began to think he imagined it. No one else woke up. He called himself stupid, making his way down the stairs to the office, knowing it wasn't anything to worry about.

It'd taken a few minutes to process what was in front of him when he opened the door. That stupid, creaky door that they always forgot to oil the hinges on. His father, slumped on the floor, papers scattered around him that he must've taken with him in the fall.

Even now, weeks later, Ranmaru hasn't accepted that his father didn't make it through that night. He didn't accept the fact that the heart attack took the only person he could tolerate. He didn't look at the casket during the funeral, a part of him telling him it wouldn't be his father, because his father wasn't dead. His father was waiting at home in his office for him, to tell him that he should practice his bass everyday if he wants to be any good at it.

Ranmaru had broken down when they left the funeral home, sitting in his father's old chair back at the house. The room still smelled like him, like all the times they'd spent in there together when he was a child, and it only served to tear his heart into even smaller pieces.

It was then that he realized he had no one left.

But looking into Juri's bright, innocent eyes when she poked her head into his room, he just can't take it any longer. He's being selfish. Juri lost her father too. She was too young to understand death, and she was too young to understand why her best friend locked himself away all of a sudden.

"Do you wanna play dolls?" She asks.

Ranmaru feels so weak he almost cries. That's her favorite question to ask, and anyone would do but she liked Ranmaru best. He always made the funniest voices.

He rubs his face with his hands, careful not to smear his eyeliner. What miracle kept it from running he wasn't sure. "Yeah, baby," he nods, not even catching his use of his father's nickname for her. "'Course I do."

Juri gives him a big smile, and he returns it, even if it is more of a pathetic attempt at a smile. He ruffles her hair up when he finally stands up and shuffles to the door, and she squeals, rushing to fix her bangs.

* * *

Giulietta comes home late that night, long after Ranmaru put Juri to bed. She catches him in the middle of snatching a cigarette, but she doesn't chide him. Ranmaru can smell the stench of booze on her before she walks in the door.

"Ranmaru?" She asks. "Finally come out?"

He's quiet, staring out the window even as he answers. "Yeah."

"Is Juri in bed?" Giulietta sets her purse down, and he notices she smells like cigarettes, too.

"Yeah. She could use a mother right now."

His mother doesn't say anything as she goes up the stairs, and he's glad. The last thing Ranmaru wanted was to even see her, let alone speak to her.

He turns his gaze to the smoke between his fingers, sighing. He walks over to smash the end of it into Giulietta's bag, snuffing it out and tossing it in the trash.

_You shouldn't smoke inside the house_, his father had told Giulietta. _The kids don't need to breathe that junk in_.

_Oh, they're fine_, she would say, but she would take it outside regardless.


	2. ii

Juri had invaded his room again, to ask him to draw with her. It was another activity they'd always done together, before that night.

Ranmaru isn't an artist, not in the least, but it makes him happy to hear Juri's praise. She always watches him so intently, her _super cool_ big brother, the big brother she always says she wants to be like. Ranmaru thinks of the day she'd brought home a school project when she was younger. _I want to be a rockstar like my big brother_.

"Maru?" She asks, because he's stopped moving the pencil, deep in thought. He looks back at her, then the paper.

"Sorry, kiddo." Ranmaru shakes his head. "Just thinkin'."

"About what?"

He smiles a little. "Stuff."

* * *

Ranmaru lies awake that night, as he has every night the past month. He hugs his pillow to his chest, a cover-up for what he's really holding. The ratty old teddy bear is squeezed between the pillow and his equally as worn out AC/DC tee, nice and warm and content. The opposite of Ranmaru.

He focuses on the photo of him and his father on his wall, standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. The trip was his father's idea — Ranmaru had been learning English, and he insisted the best way to learn it was to visit America. That same trip he'd gotten lost in the crowd and found a bench to sit on while he waited for his father to find him, because he couldn't understand anyone who tried to help him.

Now, 7 years later, Ranmaru knows it wasn't to help him learn English. His father wanted to spend time with his son, to make up for the years he'd put that responsibility on anybody but himself. Ranmaru smiles weakly. If only he'd known back then how much that old guy cared about him.

If only he'd known a month ago how much that old guy cared about him.

This finally brings the tears to his eyes, and he buries his face into the pillow-bear duo. He flinches when the door opens, and Giulietta's thinning figure is outlined by the light from the hallway.

"Ranmaru?" She asks, and he squeezes the pillow tighter to his chest. She wouldn't laugh, but she would judge him. All she did was judge him. All anyone has ever done is judge him.

"Go away," he mumbles, just loud enough to make her sigh.

He flinches again, feeling her hand thread through his hair. He chokes on a sob, torn between being disgusted by her presence and his ache for comfort. She kneels by his bed, her hand resting on his shaking shoulder.

"I know it's hard," she starts, and he thinks, _N__o, no you don't. You didn't love him. You wanted his money and now you have his debt and you think that's hard_. "Why don't you come with me? Get out of the house a little."

Ranmaru wants to shout no. To kick her in her ugly face. To tell her to screw off. But instead he mumbles a weak no, and shrugs her hand off. He can feel the disappointment when she gets up.

"Fine," Giulietta shrugs, the guise of being a caring mother dropped in an instant. "Be that way."

When she closes the door, he cries harder, finally shoving the pillow away to hug the bear his father gave him.


	3. iii

Ranmaru flicks the cigarette away, putting it out with his boot. It's hot, in the middle of summer, but he still wears his jeans and boots and t-shirts. Giulietta says that's why he's so pale, but he doesn't care. (Has he ever really cared what she says?)

Juri asked to go to her friend's house, and being the awesome big brother that he is, Ranmaru took her. She didn't need to know her mom was too hungover to drive. Just that Ranmaru was awesome, and that a motorcycle is way rock than her dusty ass 'Benz. He isn't technically old enough to drive it, but as long as he takes the back roads, no one has to know.

He didn't have anywhere to go while he waited, so he opted for hanging around in the backyard to watch them. Her friend's parents had left to run errands, somehow choosing to trust the shady sixteen year old smoker to watch two unruly little girls.

_People are too trusting_, Ranmaru thinks. He looks like shit and feels like it too, but why don't we leave our precious child's safety to him and—

Juri takes his attention off of dragging their other girl's parents, tugging at his shirt.

"'Sup, kiddo?" He has to squat to reach her level, earning a hair ruffle for his efforts.

"Wanna play hide and seek with us?" She asks, smiling when Ranmaru nods.

"'Course I do."

* * *

Juri is in bed by the time Ranmaru hears the front door unlock. He drags his hands through his hair, sighing. It's 23:00, but he can't sleep, even though he's so tired he feels sick. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees him.

Why did it have to be _his_ father? Why not Giulietta's dad? He's old as hell, and such an asshole it's awful. Why not him? Why not anybody else?

And as he hears Giulietta walk up the stairs, hears the door to the master bedroom shut, he thinks, _Why not her?_

She's an awful mother. Redeeming herself is beyond impossible. All she cares for is herself and money and that stupid fucking bar that's crawling with methheads and_ 'exotic dancers'_. He recognizes the smell of the nightly special, the one that never seemed to change all the nights he'd snuck in, on her breath every morning. Juri is too young to realize what is, or she would agree, because she wrinkles her nose every time Giulietta gives her a good morning kiss on the forehead.

Maybe this is why he finds himself staring at the knives when he goes to get a snack from the fridge. It'd be so easy. He's stronger than her, taller, heavier; she's thin and weak and right now, she's probably drunk off her ass, too...

No.

Ranmaru would never.

He's just a boy. He's just an angry, depressed boy with nothing better to think about, not a murderer. He lets his head fall against the fridge door a little too hard, wincing.

It'd be so easy.


	4. iv

At first, he thinks he's imagining it. Just another bad dream, another hallucination he'll never share with the therapist Giulietta forced him to go to. The thud makes Ranmaru's heart drop into his stomach, pulls his chest tight, and he feels tears prick at his eyes. It isn't until he throws the covers off and gets up that he can forget the image of his father laying on the ground.

He rubs his eyes, pressing so hard his vision is static when he takes his hands away. He hesitates, opening the door slowly, and walking down the steps with half the speed. Before Ranmaru can catch himself, he's walking to the office.

It's deserted now. The desk is cleared and tidied up, most of the books are packed away in boxes. None of them ever read them other than his father, so Giulietta had the maid take care of packing them away. Lazy asshole. It would do her well to do something like this once in a while.

Ranmaru walks over to a shelf still filled, absent mindedly beginning to fill an empty box. It'll be heavy, but he'll have to help carry them anyways once they're all put away.

A sad smile crosses his face when he comes across the book his father read him so often, when he wandered in his room late at night unable to sleep. Even as a kid Ranmaru was an insomniac, and he thinks, _it's funny how things never change_. Despite his panic when he heard the noise earlier, and all the things that'd happened in this room, he feels calm, paging through the hefty storybook.

It isn't until he hears coughing that his senses come back to him. It doesn't phase him until it's loud, and labored, like someone with a bad cold hacking up a lung.

Ranmaru doesn't catch himself carrying the book as he follows the sound. As he listens to it, what he thinks is the awful noise of someone getting sick joins the chorus, and the thought that it might be Juri crosses his mind. He walks faster. Not her. It can't be her. He'll shoot himself if that wretched sound is coming from her.

When he finally finds the source, or rather, _smells_ it, he's just as frozen. He's seen Giulietta throw up before, had to hold her hair back for her when she was pregnant with Juri because his father was too busy to care for his wife. Ranmaru didn't blame him.

His jaw clenched, the feeling from before setting in again. It's too late when he realizes what's going on is more than just a bad drink, when he notices the booze on the side table isn't by itself.

Before concern sets in, as if it ever will, Ranmaru sees the irony in the scene in front of him. Giulietta always yelled if they stained her precious recliner in the living room, and now look who stained the damn thing.

Ranmaru's brain kicks on, and he can move again, dropping the book on the hardwood floor. They were going to have the living room carpeted before his father passed, but suddenly what was a casual expense became something they would need to save for.

The smell is awful. Ranmaru can't recall vomit smelling so bad, until he realizes it's probably the booze. And then, finally, the box of his Trofanil next to the bottle processes, and he realizes it's more than just booze, and he panics again, feeling his heart come up in his throat, pounding so hard he can barely hear himself muster a weak, barely audible _fuck_. His hands shake like mad as he grabs Giulietta's arm and tries to find a pulse, any sign that the stupid whore isn't dead.

Tonight is the first night he's ever cried for his mother.


	5. v

Juri has made her way downstairs, arms around Ranmaru's thigh as he talks to the paramedics. He can feel her shaking, and he knows now that she isn't too young to understand death.

Combing his fingers through her sleep tangled blonde hair, he feels himself fight back tears. He can't cry in front of strangers, but he knows he'll lose it before he even makes it to the hospital. Ranmaru doesn't even listen to their questions, answering only a few before he tells them he can't answer any more. He has to, but not now. He can't do anything now.

Ranmaru bends down as soon as they leave the room, wiping the tears off of Juri's cheeks. She knows. Kids are smart, Ranmaru should know that more than anyone. All those years spent listening to his parents fight, all those years pretending he didn't know why he and his father went on weekend trips so often when he was in middle school, and he still doubted that Juri understood that her mom wasn't coming back. She understood more than Ranmaru ever could, that their parents weren't coming back.

Juri is so smart, Ranmaru wishes she were dumb. He wishes, for both of their sakes, that she didn't know what was going on. That she was just a stupid little girl clinging to her brother, crying because she was scared.

As he holds her, and starts to cry into her hair, he knows he needs someone with as much sense as Juri has.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy spook month. i wrote this originally just because Steh Auf inspired me, but i think writing small things like this would be an interesting series for october (or just in general). we'll just see how it goes
> 
> if you have ideas for something like this fic dont b shy


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